Attacks across Iraq kill dozens

At least 28 people killed in wave of attacks, while head of provincial council escapes assassination attempt.

15 Sep 2013 15:32 GMT

At least 28 people have been killed and nearly a hundred more wounded in a wave of attacks across Iraq, while the head of Baghdad's provincial council escaped an assassination attempt in the capital.

Sunday's deadliest attack hit in and around the city of Hilla, the predominantly Shia capital of Babil province south of Baghdad, where two car bombs killed 16 people, according to police and medical sources.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, a car bomb hit the convoy of Riyadh al-Adhadh, the chief of the provincial council and a Sunni legislator belonging to the party of the national parliament speaker.

Adhadh was unharmed but two others, including one of his bodyguards, were killed and four were wounded.

The attacks were the latest in a surge in unrest in recent months that has sparked concern Iraq is slipping back into the all-out sectarian bloodshed that plagued the country in 2006 and 2007.

Several other deadly attacks happened south of Baghdad, in Karbala, Nasiriyah, Suweirah and Hafriyah, as well as the predominantly Sunni cities of Abu Ghraib and Mosul.

The latest violence comes amid a months-long increase in violence, Iraq's worst since 2008, with the country grappling with a prolonged political deadlock and spillover from neighbouring Syria's ongoing civil war.

Just a day earlier, a suicide bomber at a funeral near Mosul, Iraq's main northern city, killed about 30 people and wounded dozens more, while violence in just the past week has left more than 150 people dead.

Authorities have sought to combat the bloodshed with a range of operations against armed groups and tight traffic rules in the capital, but Iraq has continued to suffer deadly attacks.